The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder Read Free Book Online Page B

wouldn’t have known what to say if he had. I followed him up the staircase, our footsteps echoing on the cast iron.
    ‘The bottom floor’s closed off,’ he said, waving the beer can in the direction of the boarded windows. ‘No way into it. We live upstairs and you’ve got to come and go this way.’
    At the top of the stairs we stopped. We stood at the corner of the house in a gloomy, shuttered gallery, which led away at right angles to our right and left. I could see about fifteen feet in both directions, then the long dusty corridors seemed to dwindle, as if they ended in the distance, in cool, shaded parts of Tokyo that I could only guess at. It was gone midday, and the house was silent.
    ‘Most of it’s closed off. The land deals in Tokyo’ve gone toes up since the bubble burst, but the landlord’s still trying to push through a deal with a developer. If it works they’re going to knock the whole thing down and build another high-rise, so the rent’s like nearly nada .’ Jason kicked off his boots. ‘Course, you’ve got to put up with the place falling down around your ears.’ He gestured vaguely down the right-hand corridor. ‘The girls sleep down there – down that wing. They spend the whole day in bed. They’re Russian. You’ll notice that here – now that someone left the kennel door open the Russians’re running all over the planet. Message hasn’t got to them that Japan’s face down in a recession. Here—’ He pushed a pair of battered hessian slippers at me and watched as I changed into them, taking off my hard little lace-up shoes and sliding the slippers over my stockinged feet. ‘Don’t they hurt?’ He pointed to the shoes. ‘They look painful.’
    ‘Yes. I’ve got blisters.’
    ‘Haven’t you got anything else to wear?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What’s in your bag? It looks heavy.’
    ‘Books,’ I said.
    ‘Books?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘What sort of books?’
    ‘Books with pictures.’
    Jason laughed. He lit a cigarette and watched in amusement as I got the slippers on. I pulled my cardigan straight, pressed my hands down on my hair and stood up in front of him, and that made him laugh again. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s your name?’
    ‘Grey.’
    ‘Grey? What sort of a name is that?’
    I hesitated. It was so strange to be in a place where no one knew me. I took a breath and tried to sound casual. ‘It’s my surname. Everyone always calls me by my surname.’
    Jason took me down the right-hand corridor, stopping to point things out as we went. The house was curiously soft and organic-feeling – the floors were covered in straw tatami matting and each movement released the secret smell of insect cocoons. Rooms led off from one side of the corridor; on the other, battered wooden screens concealed the facing walls, from waist height up.
    ‘The bathroom’s traditional so you squat. Think you can do that?’ He looked me up and down. ‘Squat? Wash out of a bucket? You know that’s the point of living in Japan – to do things differently.’ Before I could answer he turned away, to the other side of the corridor, and slid back a shutter. Sunlight flooded in through grimy glass. ‘The air-conditioner’s fucked so in the summer you gotta keep these closed all day.’
    We stood at the window and looked down at an enclosed garden. It was deep and lush like a jungle, overgrown to above the height of the ground-floor windows, packed with dark persimmon and heavy leaves that cracked the walls and stole the sunlight. I put my hands on the pane, my nose up to the glass, and stared out. At the foot of the garden was the rear of a white skyscraper.
    ‘The Salt Building,’ Jason said. ‘Don’t know why it’s called that, just got handed on, I s’pose, like the rooms, from one hostess to another.’
    I was about to turn away when I noticed, almost a hundred feet away across the tops of the trees, a red-tiled roof basking in the heat.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘That?’ He